Hebrew

Drops Review: beautiful vocab for beginners

January 15, 2022 by Jamie 2 Comments

Drops is a popular language app, known for its beautiful design and quick wins. It’s similar to Duolingo in that it’s fun, easy, and addictive, but with more of a focus on expanding your vocabulary than building your grammar. Recently, Drops has also been bought out by Kahoot! to create an insanely fun resource. This Drops review will tell you more.

Read on to see whether Drops is the right language app for you.

Drops languages

You can use the Drops to learn a ton of languages:

Ainu
Arabic
Bosnian
Cantonese
Chinese (Mandarin)
Croatian
Danish
Dutch
English (American)
English (British)
Esperanto
Estonian
Filipino (Tagalog)
Finnish
French
German
Greek
Hawaiian
Hebrew
Hindi
Hungarian
Icelandic
Igbo
Indonesian
Irish

Italian
Japanese
Korean
Maori
Norwegian
Persian
Polish
Portuguese (Brazilian)
Portuguese (European)
Romanian
Russian
Samoan
Sanksrit (for yoga)
Serbian
Spanish (Castilian)
Spanish (Mexican)
Swahili
Swedish
Thai
Turkish
Ukrainian
Vietnamese
Yoruba
Pride

Drops clearly supports a variety of languages (and a handful of accents), and they’re adding to that list all the time. When a language app supports so many languages, it’s generally safe to assume that the content won’t get too advanced; that said, Drops is best for beginners of the appropriate.

Not only that, but Drops also offers this content through source languages other than English, making it a great option for laddering languages (i.e. learning a third language through a second language). This is a more and more common feature, and can be found in other resources like Mondly, Duolingo, and Glossika.

Drops review: the Drops approach to vocab

When you first log in to Drops, you’ll be recommended to start from the very beginning of the language. This first lesson will give you some simple vocab, and get you used to the Drops style.

Some features of this strategy that you can see:

when you’re presented with a new word, you’re asked if you want to learn it (whether you already know it, or if it’s an important term for you)
you’ll see the image Drops assigns that term to
this term + its imagery will be repeated a few times to get that short term memory going

I love this because you’ll never be led to translate your vocabulary (except the first time you see it)! This not only prevents the bad habit of having to translate words before you communicate but also opens up this strategy to any native language.

As you build more and more vocab, you’re led to differentiate between vocab words through the exact imagery.

And, as you prove you’re learning the terms with more and more correct answers, Drops ups the ante by making its questions just a little more difficult.

And that’s it. Drops keeps it simple. Very, very simple.

Drops review: what you’ll learn

First, you’re introduced to new words with relevant icons, and you tell Drops whether or not you want to learn this word. This is a nice way to not waste your time learning words that either you already know, or they’re so easy that you don’t have to spend the time studying them (if they’re close enough to English, for example).

You’ll get the English translation when the word first appears, but after that, tap the icons to see what vocab word you’re supposed to be translating. I like how this makes an effort to help you avoid the habit of translation and jumps right into just thinking in the new language, the thing that Rosetta Stone really rocks at!

Plus, you get the added bonus of hearing the word/phrase being said every time you review them. Very helpful for getting new vocab cemented in your brain and exercising your listening skills.

From the start, you can see where Drops really shines: vocab. While you can use Drops to take in your very first words, it also offers vocab to cover a ton of subjects:

Basics
Food
Travel
Relationships
Work
Home

Education
Hobbies
Outdoors
Wellness
Shops

That adds up to 11 different subjects’ worth of vocab, all of which you can access in over 30 different languages. There are no “levels” or “checkpoints” to meet before you can learn any of this vocab, so choose your own path!

Drops app review: review features

Learning new words is only part of the battle – the other part is review. Fortunately, Drops offers a few different options to review this new vocab. First off: quiz mode.

In this section, Drops helps you by tying the vocab to its meaning. This is unique, and adds some more context to your terms. Drops understands that context and meaning are incredibly important to learning foreign language vocab, and they’re helping you do just that.

Just unlock the vocab to get through 5 quiz questions, and play away!

There’s also Review Dojo, which you can access after you learn 45 new terms, through this review just seems to be regular Drops focused on previously learned terms.

Drops Premium

Drops is a free language app, up to 5 minutes to practice a day. If you wanto study for more than 5 minutes a day, you can opt for Premium. Click here for updated pricing.

Besides unlimited study reps, a premium Drops subscription also gives you access to their other, lesser-known language apps, Scripts and Droplets

Drops’ other language learning apps

Allow this Drops review to introduce you to Scripts and Droplets. Both are similar language apps to Drops.

First, Scripts. With Scripts, you can learn to read and write the alphabets of other languages using Drops’ fun colors and sound effects. Scripts can help you with the following alphabets:

American Sign Language
Chinese Hanzi
English alphabet
Hebrew

Hindi Devanagari
Japanese Kana
Korean Hangul
Russian Cyrillic
Sanskrit (for yoga)

Droplets, on the other hand, is very aptly named – it’s Drops for kids. It’s pretty perfect, actually; what kid doesn’t want to learn a new language by “playing with their words”?

Drops review: who should try it

Drops is a super fun, uniquely beautiful language app that helps to keep language learning accessible by offering not only a whole bunch of languages for one price but also two whole other apps. If you’re looking for a highly entertaining way to add a bit of vocab to your language learning strategy, I’d give it a shot.

However, if you want something with a bit more oomph – like building up to sentences and/or throwing some grammar in the mix – I’d recommend an app like Lingvist or Mango Languages.

Or, if you need a fun way to learn vocab but want some more wiggle room when it comes to the categories or types of vocab, maybe try an app like LingQ or Chrome extension like Language Reactor.

Either way, Drops is an excellent start for beginners of its supported languages. It’s gorgeous, works well, and keeps it fun.

CaptionPop Review: Language Reactor alternative?

January 13, 2022 by Jamie Leave a Comment

Addicted to YouTube and want to use it better for your language learning? In this CaptionPop review, learn how you can use videos with foreign language subtitles translated into your native language to learn a language.

Because CaptionPop is an extension of YouTube itself, it supports any of the 83 languages supported by YouTube, making CaptionPop one of the most accessible ways to learn a language.

CaptionPop review: getting started

When you first go to CaptionPop, this is what you see.

As you can see, they claim to be “the best way to experience YouTube as a language learner”. The marketing is specific (unlike a ton of language learning resources out there), but whether or not it’s true? That depends on what you want for your language learning.

Scroll down and you see this, which, at least in my opinion, does differentiate CaptionPop from the competition (which I’ll get more into detail about later). These flashcards are my favorite CaptionPop feature!

You can check out these demo flashcards to see what you can expect, or you can jump right into creating your own from the videos you run into. This is an excellent way to find new foreign language vocab.

Let’s jump right in to searching for foreign language YouTube, videos, though.

First things first, you’ll be asked your native language (although you can also plug in any intermediate/advanced level language to practice that one, as well) and the language you’re learning. These languages can be changed at any time by clicking the “more” link on the top bar of your search results.

You might have to take a second to find it, just be aware. I definitely almost missed it myself!

As per usual, I went with Spanish, but that scroll box includes what looks like every language under the sun! It seems like you can use CaptionPop to learn any language that’s currently available on YouTube, which is a lot.

Remember: YouTube is full of normal, average people creating videos and uploading them. The content itself may or may not be the most interesting, but at least it’s there!

This apparently includes different accents, too, because I was able to differentiate between Spain Spanish, Latin American Spanish, and United States Spanish which…I don’t know what that means, honestly. “United States” Spanish is usually just Latin American Spanish. So maybe it’s referring to Spanish-speaking videos uploaded from the US?

You can use the search box like you would the YouTube search box, or you can search through the featured channels. I went ahead and clicked “Detección Metálica”, and I got this page full of just this YouTuber’s videos.

CaptionPop isn’t the prettiest…it’s very very simple, like straight-up basic HTML. I’m assuming it’s like an RSS feed of YouTube videos with translated captions? It doesn’t have all the special algorithms and features of regular YouTube, literally just the bilingual captions.

This means it also doesn’t include any kind of “recommended” channels for you to find. Bummer!

It’s a very simple platform. This is what you see when you choose a video.

You’re literally just getting the video, the captions, and a couple of options. I do like how you can choose to see (or not see) the different captions, or make it easy to uncover the translations. To un-blur them, just roll over them with your mouse. Easy-peasy! And very helpful for difficult phrases.

In the top right-hand corner, you can also see some easy hotkeys:

Space: play/pause
T: show translation
R: repeat
Up: previous line
Down: next line

This is another simple, handy tool, but I do wish you had the option to change/personalize them. I’d like it if I could hit all the hotkeys with one hand, but alas! That one really isn’t the biggest deal.

When one caption or video sticks out to you, you can also easily add them to your “favorites”, mostly to make it easy for you to go back to the stuff you know you like, or is a bit difficult for you.

Flashcards

My favorite part of CaptionPop is their flashcards. They’re not perfect, don’t get me wrong, but this part is what puts CaptionPop ahead of the competition (which I’ll explain in another section).

Going into the flashcard section of CaptionPop, you have a few options.

From here you have a few options, or “sections” of flashcards. They all do the same thing, but as you can see from the tip at the bottom, you can organize all your decks into whichever sections or categories you like.

Organize your flashcards by genre, YouTuber, difficulty, subject, language…whatever you like! The sky’s the limit. Make different flashcard decks into whichever categories will be the most helpful for you.

I downloaded the demo deck, which is a very simple one that just gives you an idea of what CaptionPop’s flashcards are all about.

First, you get the video clip to repeat the phrase back to you. You can replay it as many times as you need. Then, this is how CaptionPop reviews the phrases for you.

I really love this as a way to learn phrases from context via dictation, though I do have a couple of complaints.

One: if you don’t already have an international keyboard on your computer, CaptionPop doesn’t provide you with any accents or anything like that.

On the upside, though, CaptionPop does include “free characters”, which means characters that aren’t a requirement for finishing a flashcard. You can also use “!” to match “¡”, so there are some workarounds!

Nonetheless, if you don’t get something right (like accents or some-such), it’ll call you out on it (which I definitely appreciate!).

Two: not only can you not easily add these phrases to your flashcard app if you already have a flashcard strategy that you like, but CaptionPop doesn’t have any sort of mobile app.

So, if you find yourself depending heavily on CaptionPop’s flashcard tools, you’ll have to be at a computer regularly. There’s no easy way to transfer any of this to a mobile app of any kind or combine them with any flashcards you find with other language learning resources.

Otherwise, it’s a pretty excellent way of finding new phrases and learning to both listen and write them out correctly. Not bad!

The Chrome Extension

CaptionPop’s got one more trick up its sleeve, and you don’t even need to be using CaptionPop to use it! Google Chrome users can download the free Chrome extension whenever they’re browsing YouTube.

On every page of YouTube, you can find the subtitles that are available underneath every video, or if there are no subtitles at all.

This is SUPER handy for pushing yourself a little bit to maybe choose to watch videos with subtitles in the language you’re learning, or if you just like to eat chips while you watch YouTube (no judgment, I’m just as guilty of this!).

And, like I said, you don’t even have to be using CaptionPop itself (this screenshot was just of a normal YouTube search) – it’s just a handy little tool for us to use!

CaptionPop’s alternatives

Using YouTube’s captions to learn a language is really effective because it makes the whole process genuinely entertaining, and we all like it when learning a language is actually fun! Using fun methods is one of the best ways to keep yourself motivated to learn a language.

I do like CaptionPop, but there are some things that Language Reactor does better! For example, Language Reactor is a Chrome extension that keeps you on YouTube, as opposed to a whole entire other website.

Why is this better?

Comments. Recommended videos. Related YouTubers. Binge-ability.

These are all features that language learners can also use to find new vocab and work on their language skills! There’s no better way to get yourself onto the part of YouTube where international YouTubers exist and accidentally find your new favorite creators.

However, Language Reactor does NOT have any sort of native flashcards. You can collect vocabulary and export them into an excel sheet, but only with a paid subscription (something like $5/month). So it’s all about what’s important to you.

CaptionPop review: Premium

Recently, CaptionPop expanded to include Premium features – good for you, Jon! While CaptionPop is still a pretty lightweight option, CaptionPop Premium features include:

unlimited interactive flashcards (versus 5 per day with free accounts)
highlight text to translate

For only $10/month or $75/year, this is highly worth it if it’s something that you will be using consistently.

CaptionPop review: should you use it?

At the end of this CaptionPop review, I do think CaptionPop is a great resource for language learners looking for translated captions on YouTube videos, and an interesting way to find new YouTube creators that speak the language you’re learning.

I don’t like that it’s on an entirely other website, which means you don’t get the other elements of the YouTube platform that could be helpful for language learners (i.e. comments and suggested videos).

I do like the flashcard section, and how CaptionPop helps you learn sentences and phrases by typing them out. That’s a pretty solid way of getting them into your long-term memory.

My recommendation? If you’re looking for a way to watch foreign language YouTube videos and easily translate them, give CaptionPop a shot! It’s totally free, so you have nothing to lose!

Remember to keep Language Reactor in mind, as well. That one’s my preferred method, but I leave your language learning strategy up to you with this CaptionPop review.

Fluent Forever Review: learn by sound, not words

January 13, 2022 by Jamie Leave a Comment

The Fluent Forever app prides itself on teaching you “to THINK in any language”. As a language coach, this is definitely something I teach my clients – avoid translations and conjugation tables (if your goals aren’t to translate or take conjugation exams) and learn to use the stuff.

In this Fluent Forever app review, let’s talk about how this app approaches the concept, what it could do better, and if it’s right for you in your language learning

Fluent Forever review: at first glance

Besides the approach, the other thing I really like about the Fluent Forever app is the app itself. It’s really well-made, pleasing to look at, super smooth, etc. The initial run-through of the app shows you everything you need to know.

Therefore, this review is going to take you through the same process the app goes through. What I mean by that, specifically, is I don’t usually talk about prices until the end of a review, right? Here, that’s the first thing I’ll mention. ‘Cause it just looks so nice!

You can choose to pay monthly or annually – monthly is just ten bucks a month, and annually is a fraction of that. This price point puts it right in the middle of other resources like it; it ain’t gonna break the bank.

On top of that, you also get a 14-day free trial, which is also incredibly reasonable!

BUT.

Do you see that first checkmark? “Access to all our languages for 14 days”? I can see what the idea is, but it seems kind of backward to me. Basically, once you give them your money, you’re also getting…less?

I really love when language learning resources give you access to all their languages with one monthly subscription, but I think this is the first time I’ve seen access to all languages EXCEPT if you’re paying for it. Weird.

Nonetheless, the Fluent Forever app does have a solid collection of foreign languages to choose from:

Chinese (Mandarin)
Dutch
English
French
German
Hebrew
Italian

Japanese
Korean
Portuguese (Brazilian)
Russian
Spanish (Latin American)
Spanish (Castilian)

Bonus points for two different Spanish accents! Let’s start out with Castilian Spanish (my go-to).

Fluent Forever app review for advanced learners

You’ll start out with two qualifying questions:

Of course, I started out with Advanced and Great to see how the Fluent Forever app is for intermediate and/or advanced learners. The first thing you do once you’ve qualified yourself is make your first flashcard.

At first glance, this is a super solid word to start with! “Pulgar” is not really a word you’ll find in textbooks a lot.

I recognized “pulgar” passively, but if you had asked me to translate “thumb” before this flashcard, I wouldn’t have been able to.

So from here, I was genuinely enjoying this app!

You’re offered a selection of popular images to trigger the word in your brain, or you can also opt to take your own picture with your phone.

Once you make your first flashcard, you learn how to use the app.

You tap the photo to check your answer, then swipe right if you’re right, left if you’re wrong. It seems they’re hopping onto the Tinder strategy, so I’m assuming it works.

At this point, I was 100% loving this app. The first word that was shown to me was definitely at my (vaguely advanced) level, and I can see how the app would be really fun to use.

So far, so good. Whenever an app mentions a Spaced Repetition Algorithm (I still maintain nobody does it quite like Anki!) I take it with a big ol’ grain of salt, but I was willing to look over that at this point.

Then you’ll get a short tutorial of the app’s basic “tasks”.

At this point, I’m still diggin’ this app. With a Daily Streak Task, that suggests some solid daily accountability. Those of you who love the soft daily accountability of streaks with apps like Duolingo and Mondly will approve!

And, to be fair, the app follows through:

I mean…they’re not wrong.

This is where the Fluent Forever app gets…iffy (but I was still pretty optimistic at this point).

At the top of this app, I got some stats, which I assume they assume from those first qualifying questions.

While these stats happen to likely be fairly accurate (“happen to”, “likely”, and “fairly” being the operative words here), they feel really precise considering those qualifying questions were pretty general.

And, as we’re about to see, the fact that I’m questioning these stats is not totally unfounded.

I went in to learn some new words, and here’s what happened.

First of all, if you already know that I’m at least an intermediate learner, why are you showing me these beginner words? If this app assumes I’m at B2, why is it showing me A1 words? What a turn-off.

I got a little bit of optimism back thinking that I could easily swipe these words away (I dunno, maybe swiping them shifts an algorithm or something?), but no.

Sure, you can swipe them, but then it’ll give you this option, and then it’ll take a second to reload. Which takes forever, especially considering that, again, it’s already assumed I’m at a B2 level.

Okay, okay, so maybe it’s just not good for intermediate/advanced language learners? Beginner apps are perfectly valid, and these qualifying questions could simply be misleading.

Fluent Forever app review for beginners

Clearly, this strategy isn’t the best for more language learners approaching Fluent Forever with a solid vocabulary already, so let’s switch to French. From here on out, I totally get the method now.

You’ll start out with the first image, given a word. This won’t be your normal, run-of-the-mill beginner word, though, ’cause that’s not the way Fluent Forever works. You’ll get some vocab, but the point here is the sounds.

You’ll create a pretty dynamic digital flashcard: the word, its translation, an audio clip, and an image of your choosing (I’m personally not going to spend time uploading my own photo and sometimes the images that pop up automatically are kind of hit or miss) to help you learn visually.

You’ll get a few of those, see it once or twice, then it’s shuffled into your deck. When you review your deck, you’ll be tested a few different ways. The first is the image on the right: reproducing the correct sound as it’s used in that particular word.

Other examples include how to spell the word, remembering the word when you see the image, and these (my favorite):

I love the Ear Training! Here, the Fluent Forever app pits a French word against a very similar-sounding English word so you can learn to differentiate between the two. And, just like the vocab cards, these concepts are also reviewed via flashcards.

In my opinion, this is an excellent strategy for not only mastering your pronunciation but also being able to understand the words that are spoken to you. Fluent Forever’s Ear Training gets an A+ from me!

Pairing this with The Mimic Method makes a chef’s kiss of an approach to foreign language pronunciation.

Fluent Forever’s personalized flashcards

Recently, Fluent Forever updated its system to include the ability for language learners to easily create their own flashcards, which I love. While curated flashcards are great, they can be very limiting, especially past the beginner levels.

With this new feature (located at the “Explore” icon on the bottom toolbar), you can search for any word or translation of the word to be added to your flashcards. You get the option to create custom flashcards with just the singular word (which I don’t personally recommend – context is king) as well as with context supplied by Fluent Forever themselves.

The number of sentences you have to choose from depends on the word itself – while there was only one sentence available for this word, I’ve seen some words with up to 5 options for sentences.

Plus, once you select the sentence you want, you also get a chance to add imagery to the flashcard, just like Fluent Forever’s other word-only cards. These make for some very engaging digital flashcards! You will have to manually input every single word (not a big deal for beginners, very big deal for sentence miners), but all in all, Fluent Forever is shaping up to be a great tool.

In conclusion

This Fluent Forever review shows us a language learning app that’s excellent for beginner language learners (intermediate/advanced can benefit too, but not so much in my opinion) who specifically want to approach their language learning starting from sounds, not necessarily beginner vocabulary.

As I mentioned in the beginning, I’m also a huge fan of learning to “think” in the language (as they put it), and I do have to say that Fluent Forever does this pretty well.

It’s always growing, too! Fluent Forever members get access to their private Facebook group where they can ask questions and sometimes get updates. Plus, they keep their future plans for development available to the public, so you never have to wonder if whatever feature you’re looking for is coming soon.

For a language app with such a colorful history (as the most crowd-funded app in history, as well as the best-selling book), I do have to say that Fluent Forever lives up to the hype for beginner language learners who want to build fluency with the language’s sounds, not necessarily different words.

LanguagePod101 Review: A+…except for pricing

January 12, 2022 by Jamie 3 Comments

One of the more popular online resources to learn a language is LanguagePod101 (or JapanesePod101, SpanishPod101, etc.). Should you join the hype? This LanguagePod101 review will help you decide.

Learn about how the LanguagePod101 series (under the Innovative Language umbrella), how they teach languages, and whether it can help you achieve your language goals with this LanguagePod101 review.

LanguagePod101 review: languages

The LanguagePod101 series is available in a ton of languages, including:

For this LanguagePod101 review, we’ll look at SpanishPod101.

LanguagePod101’s free content

When you first sign up for an account, you’ll instantly be smacked in the face with a bunch of sales copy. They really want you to know that they’ll take your money!

Literally, that’s my first impression, that it’s really salesy. Which, I mean, if they can back it up, I’m ready to look past it. It’s when the paid product is crap that this becomes a serious nuisance.

As usual, my first step is to see what options I get for narrowing down the lessons: if it asks me about my experience with Spanish, tests my Spanish knowledge, and whether or not they actually use that information to help me.

SpanishPod101 (boy is that a mouthful) offers a diagnostic test. You can see below how I started with the bottom of the barrel, level 1 assessment, quickly understood what was expected, and then went through the levels until I was stopped.

Definitely beginner grammar. If that’s the level you need, then you’re all set! The issue is if you’re at all above that beginner level. If that’s the case, and you want to start out from where you already are, you’re gonna have to splurge a bit on the paid features.

I will definitely be addressing this, but first, we haven’t actually looked at the actual content yet! For this, I’m gonna stick to just stating that I’m at a vaguely intermediate level.

The next step is to choose a pathway! LanguagePod101 has a ton of content, and their solve for this is to create “pathways” depending on your skill level and goal. Here’s some examples.

As you can see, this pathway feature is almost like my language app search, though just for SpanishPod101 lessons. You can filter by how you like to learn (audio or video only), what subjects you’re interested in, and your current level.

When you click on the pathway of your choosing, you’ll basically get a playlist of the lessons included in the pathway. You can pick and choose lessons as you please.

Let’s get started with the pathway I’ve chosen!

I chose video because I’m not much of an audio person (Pimsleur, for example, bores me to tears), but considering this is basically just a YouTube playlist…it’s not much better.

So let’s go down a pathway that’s a SpanishPod101 “original”.

I’m impressed! What they’ve done here is come up with a short conversation to teach specific vocabulary/concepts, recorded, then split it up in a whole bunch of ways to give you a ton of options to study. With just one audio clip, you can

slow down the original audio
follow along in the target language or English
take the audio one line at a time, with the option of further slowing down each audio
listen to teach line, record yourself repeating it, and compare the two (a strategy called “shadowing”
do all the above with teach individual term introduced

That’s a lot! This is a seriously effective approach if you enjoy dissecting audios like this. You could literally spend hours on each audio.

You can also see lesson notes and grammar, but these are just basic written explanations. This is more functional for those who want to pick up the grammar implicitly (i.e. “figure it out on your own”) and might get stumped somewhere. If you need something more, I’d go elsewhere.

If you don’t want to use the available pathways, LanguagePod101 also offers a variety of vocab lists…with a HUGE caveat.

While you can view all sorts of vocab words, this is clearly built just for paid customers. I really like this platform, but any aspect of this section that would be really really great is stuck behind that paywall.

And I’m guessing part of their strategy is to show you that paywall enough times that you get frustrated and fork over the money.

LanguagePod101 review: paid content

With a free account, you do get access to a lot of stuff – basically, all the content itself. Paid subscriptions have access to all the content presented in a variety of different formats. So, really, it’s up to each individual language learner if a paid membership is worth it.

What’s more, there are three paid options. This makes things kind of confusing (in my opinion), but I’ll let the website speak for itself.

Remember how I talked about how salesy the whole site is? This is where that bait and switch comes back.

Those advertised prices don’t seem too bad at first glance! But see the asterisks? Those asterisks are there to let you know that that monthly rate only applies to 2-year subscriptions…which means you could be paying up to $550.

Holy crap!! That’s…incredibly misleading! Especially because when I go to purchase a $12.58 subscription for one month of Premium Plus, and it ends up being $47. Literally almost 4x the advertised price.

If you’re able to commit, then you’ll start to see the more reasonable monthly cost, but you’ll be paying it upfront and hoping that “new language learning resource energy” doesn’t die out.

Fortunately, these subscriptions also include a 60-day money-back guarantee, which…helps.

Regardless, this is what I really wanted to test out: getting my own teacher and personalized assessments. If this section is decent, then it’ll absolutely be worth $47/month.

The first questions are more qualifying questions: your current level, where you’re from, and the reason you want to learn Spanish.

Then we get into the assessment itself.

In just 10 questions, the assessment quickly goes from beginner Spanish to advanced to see where you’re at. It’s a pretty good test – even I wasn’t sure about a lot of it!

That was a tough test! It tested every aspect of learning Spanish (except speaking), and it touched every level.

When you submit your responses, you’ll get an automatic result, plus a verification by a “resident Spanish expert” within 48 hours.

When that email arrives, it’ll really break down the process that they recommend you use with the content they give you. It’s very, very, very in-depth. Here’s what the email says about the podcast episodes and lesson tools:

Listen to the main audio track
Read the lesson notes
Listen to the audio track with the lesson notes. If you don’t understand 80%, listen a third time
Review difficult vocabulary

On top of all that, you also get a Student Manual which, among other things, basically forces you into a weekly schedule of listening practice, vocabulary review, and writing practice.

Your teacher is there to help answer questions, guide your curriculum, assess your progress, and more.

LanguagePod101 review: should you try it?

If this LanguagePod101 review taught me anything, it’s how detailed and well-rounded this language learning resource is. All of the content itself is free to all users, but paid members get the benefit of a more personalized, hand-held approach to their Spanish.

All that said, who’s it for? Well, the free lessons are great for listening practice. You can find seemingly unlimited free podcasts that guide you from ultimate beginner to native-level audio with transcripts included for you to pick and choose the vocab you need to work on.

And the paid membership?

If you’ll really benefit from taking apart the content in several different ways, then the lower tiers would be beneficial to you. Do keep in mind, though, that unless you commit to 2 years’ worth of lessons (which adds up to a few hundred bucks alone), you’re not going to be paying $4/month. It’s misleading and I really don’t like that.

But the higher tiers? Those are definitely for language learners looking for structure. Like a lot of structure. LanguagePod101 is meant to be treated as seriously as an in-person class, which helps you keep yourself accountable, mixed with the flexibility of a one-on-one tutor, at a fraction of the price.

That Premium Plus level is very much so worth it if that’s what you’re looking for! LanguagePod101 does everything…EXCEPT for speaking practice! You will not get effective conversational practice using this resource.

If you want a great vocab/grammar/reading/listening education, this might be a great option for you. If speaking is your primary concern, though, this might be a waste of your time. In that case I’d recommend something like Language Transfer or Pimsleur (still audio-based, but for speaking).

And even though the advertised rates for the Premium Plus membership are not completely honest, it is a genuinely good deal to have someone holding your hand and providing you with personalized homework for $25-$50/month (depending on how long you want to commit yourself to this).

Click the appropriate language below to get started:

Slowly Review for learning a foreign language

January 12, 2022 by Jamie 1 Comment

Slowly is a free mobile app that isn’t primarily meant to be used to learn languages, nor is it one of the most common ways to practice writing in a foreign language. That doesn’t mean that this Slowly app review doesn’t belong here! I’d be doing you a disservice if I didn’t share this potential method of learning a language with you.

Back before the days of smartphones, instant messaging, and emails, we used snail mail. It would take days (or even weeks, depending on how far away your mail was going) for a letter to arrive, and tons of people miss this method of communication for a variety of reasons.

What does this have to do with learning languages? As it turns out, a lot! In this Slowly app review, I’ll touch on the reasons why it shouldn’t go ignored as a language learning resource, and, as always, what kind of language learners can benefit from it!

Slowly: app walkthrough

When you get your first look at Slowly, there’s no mention of language learning. Like I said, it’s not really meant as a language learning app. That’s not to say that it’s not a great way to get in practice, though!

Slowly is explained as a way to meet pen friends from your smartphone. And it’s free! Which real-life snail mail is not.

After downloading, you’ll plug in a TINY bit of information, but really not much. Fortunately, Slowly is pretty respectful of common sense internet rules, and just requests that you set up an avatar and nickname.

I got a little frustrated when it was telling me my nickname contained characters that were not allowed when really it was just too long, but whatever, I guess.

You can pick out a few subjects that you’d like to talk about (up to 30), pick out up to 5 subjects that you don’t want to talk about, and then pick languages! You also tell Slowly your proficiency in this language, which then shows up on your profile for other Slowly users to see.

Even just here you can see that this app has some potential for foreign language practice! Realistically, all any language learner needs is a person to talk to who speaks the language, and Slowly definitely offers us access to this!

Then Slowly will let you know a couple of important nuggets of info, and you’ll get started finding pen friends.

That first image is the thing that makes Slowly so great for language learners like me!

The awesome part of snail mail is that it takes a while. It’s not instant. A lot of people love the nostalgia of that, which is fair. Personally, I don’t appreciate it for that particular reason.

If you’re like me, you get overwhelmed by too many instant messages (using something like Tandem or HelloTalk), especially if they’re not in your native language and it takes you more effort to read and respond. That overwhelm is a major turnoff and becomes a serious obstacle to getting in more writing practice.

With Slowly, it takes an entire day to send/receive messages. I like how this gives me a chance to breathe. It’s significantly less stressful for me. I don’t have to feel rushed to understand any messages, nor to express myself in the language, which can be really difficult sometimes.

Anyways, Slowly offers you two ways to meet new pen friends: auto-match or manual. I don’t personally like auto-match, but here are the options you can choose from in your new auto-match pen friends.

If that’s not your thing, you can filter through potential pen friends and reach out to the ones that sound (read?) like someone you’d want to talk to. And, of course, everything is pretty anonymous – there’s no real picture, no real name, nada!

You can see which languages these potential pen friends can communicate in as well as which country they’re from, which I love.

The most important stats are when they were last online and their “sent:received” ratio. There’s no limit to how many people you send mail to or how often you send mail, it’ll just take a minute to get there (and get back to you when they respond).

For example, mail that I send to/receive from Spain takes 20 hours to get to its destination. Mail that’s going to/coming from different countries in South America takes just 8 hours.

Nonetheless, send a message to anyone you want! The only requirement set by the app is that your message is at least 100 characters, which makes sense. Imagine receiving an actual piece of mail and it just said “hey”. That’s something that only works in the atmosphere of instant messaging; otherwise, you’d just be wasting your actual money.

Pro tip: I didn’t receive any letters from people I didn’t initiate the conversation with until I wrote a bio. Once I did that, I started getting letters!

A couple of things to note about how all this works.

You’ll always know what letters are coming from who, and when they’ll get to you. Basically, you’ll be able to see everything except for the message itself.
Once you work up a history of talking back and forth with someone, you’ll always be able to see all of your messages together, which is fun!
Because of the nature of this app, conversations have to be…simpler. This isn’t a chat where you can easily reference every little statement – it’s more like you got a letter from someone responding to your letter, but since you don’t have the letter you sent, it can be hard to remember what you’re talking about.
If you’re “friends” with someone, you can share other types of media. It doesn’t really have much to do with the actual “pen pal” part of it all. Basically, if you’ve gotten to the point where you’ve actually built a relationship with a pen friend, it’s another way for you two to connect!
Many people like to collect stamps, just like with normal snail mail. You can collect stamps by having pen friends from a variety of different countries, or you can go ahead and buy them with real money (though it’s totally unnecessary, and goes to support the app).

And, really, that’s it! The Slowly app is a pretty simple concept for connecting with those who speak your foreign language natively, without a lot of the pressure of face-to-face conversations or instant messaging.

It’s not a language learning app, and that might matter

I’ve mentioned that Slowly isn’t built specifically for language learners – it’s more of an “accidental” option for language learners who would really benefit from it.

However, because it’s not particularly meant for language learning…it’s not perfect. For example, in comparing Slowly to HelloTalk, there is quite a bit of deficit.

I mean, HelloTalk supports text, audio, video chats, real-time corrections…there’s a lot of options. And Slowly just doesn’t have any of those features. It’s just like writing physical letters to a pen pal, except it’s digital.

The fact that Slowly is simple is one of the reasons why it’s so great but definitely has its pros and cons. Other features would make Slowly more desirable for language learners, but, at the same time, the lack of features is part of the charm. It’s a bit of a double-edged sword.

But there are three main reasons why Slowly could be more beneficial to you as a language learner (as it is for me):

Like I’ve said, the pressure is gone. HelloTalk stresses me out. Instant messaging is great for real quick conversations, but I get overwhelmed when it takes me a minute to figure out how to write a message in a foreign language, just to have to do it all over again a few minutes later.
Slowly allows you to operate in more than one language for free! HelloTalk makes you pay for more than one language (it’s only a few bucks a month, but it’s more than free!). With Slowly, talk to as many people as you like in as many languages as you like. No worries!
Total anonymity. If you’re feminine-presenting or have a feminine name, you know what it’s like to hop on a texting app and get bombarded with texts from men. That issue is solved with Slowly!

Slowly app review: who it’s for

With this Slowly app review, understand that it doesn’t have a lot of the tools that HelloTalk or other resources have, but I don’t think language learners should necessarily turn their cheeks to the practice or the friendships that are possible either.

For one, if you really value the nostalgia of snail mail, Slowly is a fun app to use no matter if you’re trying to work your foreign language skills or if you’re just interested in connecting with other English speakers.

For two, Slowly is a nice option to slow down (and I just realized that’s why it’s named Slowly!) your communication and take away the instant-ness of modern-day conversations.

Slowly is like the Speechling of speaking practice for the introverts of language learning; let’s take away the pressure of live conversations while still working on our foreign language skills!

Regardless of whether you feel comfortable using Slowly in the language you’re learning or not, Slowly is a really fun way to connect with strangers that you would’ve never connected with before, while also keeping your identity protected for internet safety reasons.

Tandem Review

January 11, 2022 by Jamie Leave a Comment

Tandem is one of the fairly popular names in the language learning world for connecting language learners with native speakers of that language. Right from your phone, you can strike up a conversation with somebody who speaks a foreign language, get in practice, and make a friend!

In this Tandem review, let’s dive into what goes into this experience: the pros, the cons, and if Tandem is right for you and your language learning journey.

Oh yeah – we’ll go into Tandem Pro too, and see if it’s something that you can benefit from, or if you’re good to go with the free app.

Tandem languages

Because of the way Tandem works (meaning Tandem itself doesn’t really create content, it’s all the content [messages] that users create), there isn’t really a limit to languages! As long as you can find somebody on the app that is willing to talk to you in that language, you’re set.

Which is why on the website, Tandem lists its languages as:

English
French
German
Italian
Portuguese
Russian

Spanish
Japanese
Chinese
Korean
Other

In other words, open up the app and give it a shot, you never know!

Tandem app review: getting started

When you first download the Tandem app, you’ll get some pretty basic starting, qualifying questions. Unlike qualifying questions with other apps that want to know your level in the language you’re learning (’cause, spoiler alert, you should have the vocab/grammar down to participate in basic conversation), Tandem’s questions figure out who you are and where you’re looking to go.

Pretty basic stuff, right?

When choosing which languages you’re practicing, you can choose as many languages as you like at any level. And Tandem offers almost any language under the sun – basically, if there’s someone on the app who speaks your language, you’re set!

Once that’s done, you’ll get some more qualifying questions to help pair you up with a conversation partner that you’ll actually enjoy talking to.

Again, pretty basic, reasonable stuff.

I wouldn’t sweat these questions too much; I’m not sure they really show up anywhere major, and even if they do, nobody really pays attention to them. In my experience, you’ll get a GIANT influx of messages once you get going anyways! And, to be honest, I’m not sure anyone really ever sees your answers. Maybe it’s just an internal thing?

Oh yeah, and that last screenshot? I’m not sure if Tandem is trying to push Tandem Pro here or if there’s actually a “waiting line”, but my account was approved within like 20 minutes or so. Use your real name and a real photo of you (yup, that’s required!) and you shouldn’t have any problems.

Nonetheless, you do get this offer:

If you really love using Tandem you could find a lot of value in Tandem Pro. It’s very reasonably priced and gets you a lot more access to more practice as well as partners that you may have more chemistry with.

At the very least, I think the unlimited translation would absolutely be worth it. Find a friend or two that’ll help you build up your vocabulary and it’ll be an awesome learning tool!

After all that setup, it’s time to get in some practice!

Tandem review: finding a partner

The first place you’ll go is the Community tab. Here’s you’ll find a long list of potential conversation partners to help you practice the language you want to learn.

Everybody’s got a picture, their real name, and a “bio”, which seems to be their answer to the “what are your goals” question that we answered before. Sometimes it’ll be a complete sentence, and at the same time I’ve literally seen just “environmental” as a bio, so….grain of salt?

Here you see a couple of things. Most importantly, obviously, there are a few potential candidates for getting in some language practice.

Since I told Tandem that I’m a native English speaker and am learning Spanish, they’re recommending the opposite back: native Spanish speakers learning English.

Above that, you can see “featured learners” which…I’m not entirely sure what that means. Maybe really active texters?

And above that, you can search for members who are geographically near you. That’s only relevant if you’re a paid member and value in-person language exchanges.

BUT this option does provide great opportunities for language learners who are interested in local language learners but want to test the waters a bit and see if you actually enjoy talking to language learners nearby.

If you’re not finding anybody who you have any interest in talking to, hit the “settings” button in the upper-right hand corner to get this screen.

My favorite part of this is where you can select your gender and your age range. Especially considering you have to use your real name and your real photo, I get totally inundated by messages from dudes (like the guy who asked if my dad is an artist [cue massive eye roll]), so that’s incredibly helpful!

I found one person that I wanted to talk to and initiated a conversation with her. Then BAM!

So. Many. Texts. So. Many. Notifications.

I wonder if I was put into that list of “featured” texters?

I mean, it’s great for finding new conversation partners! The sky’s the limit!

It can also be incredibly overwhelming, which is why I’ve left most of these messages unread. Honestly, I just couldn’t keep up!

Oh yeah, peep that last one. What, you thought I was lying?! You think women don’t drown in messages from random men just because they’re women? Think again, mate!

Now, when you’re in a conversation, what options do you have available to you? Well….like all of them. Tandem is primarily a texting app, but you can easily enough also use it to video chat, send audio messages, images, GIFS…you name it, you got it!

Plus, one thing that’s really helpful if you want to be precise, is easy corrections within conversations.

It may be worth mentioning that Tandem doesn’t supply you with any special keyboards or anything, so you’ll need to make sure that your phone’s native keyboard supports the letters (accents and all!) that your target language uses.

Personally, I just use Google’s keyboard, and that gives me access to all the accents I need to text in Spanish, French…and pretty much every accent that I could possibly need for letters in the Latin alphabet.

Honestly, the few conversations I did have before I got overwhelmed (which I already knew was going to happen based on my HelloTalk review) were really enjoyable! It just…texting is really quick, you know? It’s meant to be instant, rapid-fire. Which is hard when you’re doing it in another language!

That includes not only reading and figuring out someone else’s messages in another language but also taking the time and energy to communicate in the language yourself. It’s really hard work.

Most of the conversations I had were mostly (if not all) in Spanish. Most of them also didn’t really volunteer corrections, but that’s an easy enough thing to just ask a person about.

Dani, on the right, was the first one to correct my texts, so I did the same back. It’s really nice, but it also requires a lot of mental energy, when you’re already using so much mental energy to translate these texts!

That mixed with all the messages I was getting from random Spanish speakers…it can be a lot for some people. And one thing we want to avoid with language learning is getting too overwhelmed/expecting too much from ourselves.

Tandem tutors

Lastly, we have one more section of the Tandem app: the “Tutors” section.

This is a kind of interesting model, to be honest. I mean obviously, anybody using this app would have at least some interest in a paid tutor, I guess I just wasn’t expecting it?

Nonetheless, Tandem handpicks tutors for you that they think are interesting to talk to. You pick a tutor, pick a time, and select how long you want your lesson to be: 20, 40, 60, or 90 minutes long (which is a really long lesson!)

This is just one example of one of the tutors you can try out. I mean, there are plenty of ways to learn to speak a language, but if you haven’t found one that you like just yet, maybe you’ll want to give this section of Tandem a go!

Who the Tandem app is for

After doing this Tandem app review, I love it! I think this is a great resource for language learners: the app is attractive and smooth, there are a ton of potential conversation partners (at least for Spanish, I can’t say for less popular languages), and it’s really easy to get thrown into some conversational practice.

But, like I said, I knew going in that it wouldn’t be for me. While the concept is great, Tandem is not for language learners who easily get overwhelmed by a lot of conversations/attention (i.e. introverts). If you have the social energy to keep it up, Tandem is great!

Tandem is primarily best for writing (or texting) practice, but the sky’s really the limit. Considering you can send audio clips or even have a video chat with anybody, that takes care of your speaking practice, as well. That’ll get you your reading and listening practice along with it!

It’s also worth reiterating that Tandem is not for absolute beginners – you should at least be able to carry on a basic conversation, or you’ll be totally lost. Otherwise, though, Tandem is a great way to get in all four of the major language learning skills!